last week, and so this week, we're all the more grateful for time to take life in slowly, time to notice the purple undersides of clouds, share unhurried hugs, time to crouch down and smile into our daffodils to tell them they can do it, they can pick up their heavy heads.

But last week? Baby were we ever shooting around the town like pinballs, past each other, past normal activities, all in a mad rush of a week of radio election coverage and a poetry festival. It just may have been the busiest since we’ve been married; we slept little and missed much.

We vaulted I-love-you’s back into the house as we stepped out the door. We ate yogurt and pizza toast and leftovers for lunch because we had exactly 23 minutes to grate some cheese, grind some pepper, and shove a pan in the oven. Ping!

(Broccoli-mascarpone soup, pizza ciabatta, and our new fave: organic lemon curd yogurt--delish!)

There was a lot of adrenaline, a lot of I-can’t-wait-until-this-week-is-over. But in all of that, there was something I haven’t felt in months, a gift. Productivity. A gift of energy.

I admit, I get a high from efficiency, from accomplishing tasks, from doing. This, I am realizing, is not always right. When my legs are aching from walking the same cobbled streets six times a day, but I've delivered the poets to their readings in time, delivered (at the last minute) an unspilled macchiato for a precise poetry editor . . . then, it's tempting to feel all look-at-how-capable-I-am. I find too much of my identity in that, and I did again last week, not remembering the One who keeps the train a-rollin' when my eyelids refuse to show more than half an iris. I have been given tasks, and given strength for them. For this ability to fulfill His will, I can only give thanks. (And yet, I still want to do, to do, to do to feel like I have done. The doing is never mine.)

Walker soldered into the night and built web-pages in a tenth of the time it usually takes. In the end, his radio team presented an awesome and professional election broadcast and the poetry festival ended without any poets lost. Slowness is necessary sometimes. We are glad for the slow that came, at last, yesterday.

With yesterday came peace. The nymphs of spring had born in the color and the world was saturated in sun. We said Howdy-do-dee, Spring! and walked and walked in the twilight calm under the most curvaceous clouds skimmed by a fringe of seagrass below. That sabbath after a week of work was beautiful and more appreciated.

We slept in today for the first time in a week, and waking up to the silence (the birds were past their morning broohaha) was luxury indeed. We slowly and calmly took in the light, the light savoured all the more for its rarity (and the shadows, just the same.)

The carnival has stopped and the pinball machines are silent, and we are enjoying time to go on errands together, time to look out at the sea today. We are thankful for productive times, and thankful for restful times, and thankful for these rhythms that keep life diverting, that help us see everything, everything is from Him. The strength to get through, the joy to more than get through, and the calm unwindings.